Pope Benedict XVI last night attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a 'desert of godlessness'.
He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified.
'Religious sentiments' were increasingly ranked among the 'unwelcome leftovers of antiquity' and 'held up to scorn and ridicule', he added.
'We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink,' said the Pope at an evening ceremony at the Coliseum in Rome.
'Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode.
'Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.'
The German-born Pope, who turns 82 later this month, prayed Christians would respond by growing in faith
'May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic,' he added. He also condemned the oppression of women, saying there were 'many societies in the world where women fail to receive a fair deal.'
'Christ must be weeping for them,' he said.
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Check Out the Obama Team’s Financial FilingsAdministration officials and high-ranking executive branch employees are required to disclose [2] the intimate details of their financial lives. The disclosures made include stock holdings, previous salaries and even book deals, such as Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan Krueger's advance of at least $180,000 [3] (plus royalties) from MacMillan, the publisher of his textbook, "Explorations in Economics." ProPublica is collecting these disclosures, and today, we're sharing what we've got [1].
We've flipped through the disclosures of 179 officials [1], ranging from the White House social secretary to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the documents are rich with interesting details. Help us parse the disclosures and post your discoveries in the comments section below.
Here's an example of what we've found so far: On paper, Susan Rice looks like she belongs at the Treasury [4], rather than the State Department. The new United Nations ambassador's disclosure [4] lists 10 individual stock holdings, largely in Canadian companies, that total at least $4.25 million.
The disclosures are a matter of public record. But the government insists on giving them out by request only. We’re cutting out the middleman: Dig into the documents yourself [1].
Obama's staffing problems are blatant -- from that bleating boy of a treasury secretary to what appears to be a total vacuum where a chief of protocol should be. There has been one needless gaffe after another -- from the president's tacky appearance on a late-night comedy show to the kitsch gifts given to the British prime minister, followed by the sweater-clad first lady's over-familiarity with the queen and culminating in the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Why was protest about the latter indignity confined to conservatives? The silence of the major media was a disgrace. But I attribute that embarrassing incident not to Obama's sinister or naive appeasement of the Muslim world but to a simple if costly breakdown in basic command of protocol.
Anyway, the old crew scurried on board the new ship as the old one sank. Joining the Muslim countries are such stalwarts of human rights as China and Cuba. The only reason Mordor didn’t make the list is that J. R. R. Tolkien forgot to have Sauron denounce the “Zionist entity” in The Lord of the Rings.Read the whole thing.
The American Way [David Freddoso]Given that Cook County is basically Chicago and so is Obama, I think Mr. Freddoso has a strong point - Obama is out to screw us all.
Cook County Board President Todd Stroger recently explained cigarette tax increases in an unexpectedly candid radio interview.Host John Williams asked: Isn't it unfair to keep targeting smokers with tax increases?
"That is the American way," Stroger replied. "And the way that it's generally done is, you find some group that's small enough where they can't beat you up, and you tax them and you tell everybody else, 'See? We didn't tax you.' "
This is President Obama's plan, too, if you understand what he is doing and hopes to do to high-income earners, energy producers, small-business owners and yes, smokers.
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